Cipher: Pouran Jinchi & Ruba Salameh

About

The artists come from different generations, but share an innovative and emotionally affecting use of abstraction and pattern. Their paintings are deeply connected to the traditions of Islamic calligraphy and geometric design, while also in dialogue with multiple moments and styles from across the Western modernist and post-modernist canon.  

The exhibition title Cipher points to the shared interest of Jinchi and Salameh in abstract painting operating as a coded system of communication – a language simultaneously impacting the senses and operating as an enigmatic puzzle of sorts. Additionally, the etymology of the word highlights a significant historical moment of scientific and cultural influence and exchange. Originating from the Arabic word for zero (sifr), the term ‘cipher’ spread to Europe as part of the Arabic numeral system during the Middle Ages, where it crucially supplemented the Roman numerical system which lacked the concept of zero, which today is used across the globe and is a key building block of the digital world. Tracing the lines of connection back further still, in the last decade there has been the discovery of the earliest recorded use of a symbol for zero in the Bakhshali manuscript, an ancient Indian scroll dating back to the third or fourth century. 

Pouran Jinchi’s works in the exhibition bear testament to her ongoing exploration of how architecture, objects,  decoration, and the written word can be imbued with symbolic power. Trained as a mathematician and classical calligrapher in Iran, Jinchi went on to study art in Los Angeles and New York. A constant across her decades of work is the way she explores a productive tension between the seeming control of Islamic calligraphy and the fluid spontaneity associated with Western abstract painting.